


to love a shadow

by kizzie



Category: Sorcery (Video Game), Steve Jackson's Sorcery! - Steve Jackson
Genre: Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Happy Ending, Other, gender neutral reader, pseudo-poetic bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 04:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13473720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kizzie/pseuds/kizzie
Summary: I am beginning to accept that it is only him and I in this world, alone.





	1. PART I: THE BAKLANDS

**Author's Note:**

> So! This takes place in a playthrough where, when you get to the tower and have to fight Flanker, you figure out the spells by dying over and over again in some sort of terrible guess and check fashion. In case that's not clear. Also, the Analander doesn't find the hourglass during the playthrough.
> 
> Not necessarily super canon-compliant (esp. some parts at the end), but it was originally just a little self-indulgent thing anyway, so whatever! I don't expect anyone to even find this but if u do read at ur own risk I guess!

**PART I: THE BAKLANDS**

_ If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. _

Kahlil Gibran

 

And as I stepped out of the Kharé gates, those giant stone arms which had held me in their grasp for so many days, I was well and truly alone.

*

It feels I have been wandering these quiet plains for years, at times. I have met plenty of others on the road, but they were ghosts—a kind unlike the other ghost who has haunted me since I met him, first in the forest that night with a blade to my throat, and then again in the Festival of Thieves, where he threatened me again and I laughed and laughed. He is a living spirit. But here? Everything dead, or soon to be dead, in another century or so.

To long to see the man who nearly killed me on the day I first saw him—the nights must truly be very quiet here. That, or something else which I dare not even think of.

*

To play with time as if it were a story on a page, to be erased and rewritten and then erased again, has become habit to me. As if nothing here is important because it is not permanent. By that logic, I may as well go back to Analand empty-handed, or curl up and lie in the dirt waiting for the blue light of the towers to take me away too.

I cannot help but feel as if I am taking life away rather than giving it. But that cannot be true, can it? The light is but a window to the past, and nothing more.

*

I finally made it onto that godforsaken bridge with appendages intact and nearly lost my stomach climbing back to the bottom. Funnily enough, after everything I've been through, I still abhor heights.

When those two familiar eyes pierce me once again, I cannot say I am surprised. Of course our paths would cross again. Every time I begin to fear we will not see each other again, we meet, like fate, if I believed in such a thing. It is an inevitability.

Equally as inevitable is the idea of faith as a double-edged sword. I knew he couldn't travel with me. In truth, I knew that he never could, as much as I wanted him to. I longed for the companionship, and perhaps for something else which is much more difficult to admit. He walks a path parallel to mine, roads always nearly touching, but never quite crossing.

I know full well they may not ever cross in the way I desire them to. Of course I know that.

*

The forest is a place I'd rather not dwell on, with water in my shoes and the quiet of the night ringing in my ears. Isolation is nothing new, and neither is loneliness. But it is the feeling that I am stuck on the wrong side of a cliff, with myself and the crown on this side and every person from every land on the other is what may truly break me. Myself, and the crown, and a crown-shaped shadow overlooking us both.

As I fall asleep, I sometimes imagine warm breath in my hair, or a rustling of the bushes before me. Those are the times when I feel that way, or at least the times I feel it the most. I am beginning to accept that it is only him and I in this world, alone.

*

When it is very quiet, I sometimes sing softly to the wind so that I may keep my spirits up. I sing a song of love and I am thankful that there is no one around to hear it.

*

All that water and all this time. I have killed the final serpent. I think about death more and more now. I sometimes remember our lives, his and mine, and the ease with which one of us could die with the other never knowing.

He gave me his sword and I wanted to cry, but I refused to. Is this the life of a villain or a hero? I suppose, for now, I am both.


	2. PART II: MAMPANG

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I try not to think about how, in a dozen different universes, Flanker has murdered me and is left to deal with the consequences. It is nearly as painful to imagine him lonely as it is for me to be lonely myself._

**PART II: MAMPANG**  

_We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them._

Kahlil Gibran

 

When I arrive outside of Mampang, close enough to see the walls of the city far off in the horizon, I feel smaller than I have ever felt before. Smaller, but not alone. It has been long enough now that when he slides into the grass beside me, I am expecting it. 

He tells me there is no one waiting for him back home and that he is merely a ghost walking. He must haunt someone, he says. I would invite him to haunt me, but he will be gone in the morning, and those are the kinds of things the two of us do not say out loud.

So we sleep. His body is warm cradled around my own. 

*

Although I have been alone for so long, my travels now take on a new hue—some black and blue monstrosity which makes me want to scream.

My mind dwells on useless things, and guilt. So I burned the bird's nest. Does it matter? I've broken enough bridges by now to know that looking back is not a viable option. There is no more time for looking. Either move back or move forward, and trust life to follow whichever way you go.

*

I am ashamed to admit, I cannot imagine this journey without him. The short time we have spent together and the long nights I have spent alone would never be enough to erase him from my mind.

I have a quest, and he has a debt. The crown has taken its place as one half my heart, that passion and power burning as bright as when I left Analand. The other half, a longing—an empty space, like a clouded breath among the frigid night air.

He is that other half.

I try to forget this as I walk up those looming tower steps for the first time.

*

I look him in the face for the first time in what feels like forever, but it is not his face. It is another man's face, the face of a ruthless stranger, plastered onto his body with that wicked smile. My heart is still in my chest. I have never been afraid of him, and I am not afraid of him or any death now—but I fear myself, and what comes next.

"Flanker..." I say. I take a step back, away. I fear losing him.

It is obvious he is not himself. This is cruel, even for the archmage.

He comes in to attack, and I dodge. He swings again, and I duck. But I cannot dodge forever and he cannot fight forever. I know this.

If I die, I am revived, again and again until I succeed. I will have to kill him or find another way. I know this too, although I do not want to think about it.

I curse myself for not learning the correct spells to counter his attacks. I curse him for becoming important enough that he is what stands between myself and the crown I have worked for all this time. I curse my hands for dropping the blade and letting him slice through my chest, like a knife into warm butter.

*

I look him in the face and I know that I cannot do it.

"Tell me your fears, Analander," he says, knife to my throat like that very first night. He stands behind me, body pressed against my back, and I am longing once again.

"I believe you already know them, my friend," I answer.

He laughs, but the sound is cold and hollow. "We are not friends," he spits. "I am not your Flanker anymore."

I smile wryly. "You were never mine at all."

“You are wrong.” I can practically feel his smirk against my neck. "But it does not matter." And the blade splits my throat, and I fear that I must start from the beginning once again.

*

I look him in the face and I remember how he killed me so easily. I remember the impermanence of time. I throw him out the window in this one, but this is not right either, and I jump out soon after, falling headfirst toward the hard steps below.

*

I try not to think about how, in a dozen different universes, Flanker has murdered me and is left to deal with the consequences. It is nearly as painful to imagine him lonely as it is for me to be lonely myself.

In the Baklands, the centuries were putty in my hands and he was the only constant, like an anchor in time. Now, that anchor has become dislodged, and he is lost to time like the rest of them. I am back on the wrong side of the cliff again, but this time with no shadow and no crown.

*

I have died time and time again. It is like casting spells at a wall—sometimes they work, and sometimes they do not, but there are so many spells and so little time. I grow weaker and weaker. This trial and error is a lame victory, but I will take what I can get.

When I finally cast that combination of spells, his eyes become his own again.

"Analander?" he asks softly.

He looks at his hands as if they have done something terrible and he wants them gone. I suppose, in other universes, they have.

"Flanker," I whisper in answer.

*

The archmage falls easily. It is such an anticlimax, I cannot believe all we have been through to get here. We. This is no longer my journey alone, but ours, together.

If I were the sentimental sort, I might wax poetic about the power of love. But I let our hands, intertwined, speak for themselves.

*

It is only once we are back in Analand together that I think of it. Our first night home, I wake up in a panic over it. Someday, I will die, and wake up back in Mampang, forced to relive it all again. My Flanker, what we have now, will disappear.

I have heard legend of an hourglass in Mampang that can reverse this curse and let me die for good. Perhaps we will go back to Mampang someday, Flanker and I, and find it together. I have not told him yet, and will not for some time.

He sniffles in his sleep, rolls over, and I have never loved anyone more. For now, let us rest, and be together. It is enough.


End file.
